For most parents, their child’s teenage years are just as bad, if not worse, than the terrible twos. But for Sachiko and Masato Azuma, the situation is further complicated by their son Hikaru’s autism. As puberty strikes, Hikaru’s growing sexual awareness creates uncomfortable and embarrassing situations, and begins to affect his little sister, Kanon. The already-taxed Sachiko has to find ways to alleviate the problem, while being mindful of the affects her approach may have on her children and on the people around them. But when Masato must again relocate for work, the pressure further falls on Sachiko as the decision is made to move in with her mother-in-law, who has always been less-than-accommodating to Hikaru’s needs. With new challenges arising daily – Hikaru tackling adolescence through the lens of autism, Kanon struggling with peer pressure, Masato throwing himself into the new job – will Sachiko, the Azuma family’s rock, succumb to the cracks that have begun to form in her generally cheerful outlook on life?(from the back of the book)
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today we’re going to talk about puberty. Well, Sachiko is going to talk about it, anyway; but only for a little bit.
You’d think that they’d spend more time on Hikaru’s puberty since it takes up about half of the summary. Unless by ‘puberty’ they mean the fact that Hikaru is starting to become a bit rebellious and independent. They mentioned ‘sexual awareness’ so I don’t think that’s the case.
It’s hard to believe, but Hikaru’s already 14 years old. The little baby we met in Volume 1 is now a teenager, for better or for worse. The way the series lets us know that Hikaru has reached puberty is to let us know that he has started to touch himself. It embarrasses Kanon for all of a few pages because he does it (over his clothes) while she and her friend are in the room. This problem is immediately solved by Sachiko telling Hikaru that he can touch himself as long as he does it in his room. So he does, and then it never comes up again.
Aside from that, there is another sign that Hikaru is now a teenager: rebellion. An example of this is him refusing to properly ask for a reward sticker after completing his chores (saying ‘here’ instead of ‘sticker please’). Another thing he did was that he wouldn’t let Sachiko sit next to him on the bus to school. There’s a panel on one page with Hikaru sitting on the bus and Sachiko standing a few of seats away because Hikaru didn’t want her to sit near him. I must’ve giggled for five straight minutes when I saw that. He’s wanted to ride the bus on his own for a while now; this is as close as he’s going to get to that goal at the moment.
Another thing he’s started to do is take more notice of what the people around him are doing. There are two main instances of that in this volume. One is at school where he was pestering a boy about washing his hands after using the bathroom (he ended up getting in a fight), and the other one is at the supermarket where he confronted one of Kanon’s friends and a complete stranger about robbing from the store because they were carrying things in their arms (to Hikaru, shopping means putting things in a basket otherwise you’re taking without paying). Both of those things are things he was taught as a child and they are rules he has followed all of his life (wash hands after using the bathroom and use a basket at the store before paying). He hasn’t tried to get other people to follow these rules, or any other, before now.
It’s good that he’s started to interact more with the people around him, but he still has a lot to learn.
There’s also a Kanon centric arc in this volume involving bullying. Now, Hikaru and Kanon are seven years apart in age and have never attended the same school at the same time; so Kanon being bullied because of Hikaru has never really been a major concern (it has been a concern, just not a major one). I don’t think Kanon’s classmates have ever really seen Hikaru, or if they have it’s only in passing, so they either don’t know him or aren’t aware of his odd behaviours. This was bound to change since Sachiko and Masato aren’t trying to keep Hikaru’s autism hidden.
This first comes up one day when Kanon and Hikaru go to the park. Hikaru gets out of the car first and takes off running with Kanon close behind. Hikaru is excited so he’s being very animated and making a lot of noise, shouting ‘water wheel Archimedes’ over and over. The two run past three of Kanon’s classmates, who are in the park on their way to some kind of English prep school class, or something. Anyway, Hikaru and Kanon run by them to the water wheel and the three classmates remark about how Hikaru is weird. Kanon calmly tells him that her brother is not weird, he’s just happy at the moment. She says this very matter-of-factly because, to her, Hikaru’s behaviour isn’t weird at all, it’s actually fairly normal for him. The classmates call Hikaru weird a few more times and then Sachiko shows up and the three children run off.
Now, I wouldn’t call this bullying just because of this one incident. Kanon and her classmates are only six or seven years old. To a child that young, I imagine that seeing someone twice their age acting like a young child is pretty strange, especially if it’s a stranger. Hikaru does have pretty weird behaviours, but they’re not weird for him. Kanon doesn’t see his behaviours as weird because she’s used to it (although I imagine that if she’d seen someone else doing those same behaviours she’d probably think it was strange, she probably wouldn’t really say anything about it though).
What I’m saying is that these kids have every right to think that Hikaru is strange, because they’re not used to him. What they don’t have the right to do is bully Kanon because of it. I really don’t understand the logic of bullying Kanon because of her brother. I can only assume it’s because Hikaru’s not around for them to make fun of behind his back, which is what they’re doing to Kanon.
One of the girls from the park has a birthday party and invites every girl in the class except for Kanon. The boy from the park and one of his friends see Hikaru and Kanon at the supermarket with their mother and they see Hikaru telling people (one of Kanon’s friends and a complete stranger) that ‘taking without paying makes you a robber’ like I mentioned above and they start laughing about it to themselves. I’d like to take a moment to mention the friend that Kanon runs into at the supermarket, Kuroiwa-kun. He’s the first one that Hikaru confronts about being a ‘robber’. At first he’s confused and surprised about it, but then Sachiko and Kanon explain and he doesn’t give it a second thought even though he’s never met Hikaru before now.
There’s probably more going on off-panel, but that’s really all we see happening. Point is, people are making fun of Kanon and her brother and Kanon is very bothered by it all. Then one day, I think it’s the day after the supermarket incident, Kanon and a friend of hers are on their way to school when they run into the boys from the supermarket. One of the boys starts in right away, making fun of the incident in the supermarket and calling Hikaru stupid and retarded, among other things. He won’t stop, even with Kanon’s older friend yelling at him, and that’s when Kanon’s finally decided that she’s had enough.
She rushes the boy, Iida-kun, and knocks them to the ground. They get into a fight which is only stopped by Kuroiwa-kun getting a teacher. I am very proud of Kanon for this. Getting into fights is not something that should be encouraged, but Kanon is defending herself and her brother in the only way that she knows how. So I say good on her.
They both end up in the nurse’s office where Iida-kun gets a talking-to and we get a very moving scene where Kanon breaks down and starts yelling at Iida for calling her brother stupid. Hikaru is her big brother and to her he’s the best big brother in the world and she loves him very much. Kanon looks up to Hikaru and she doesn’t understand why others would make fun of him. She calls him ‘stupid’ all the time, but it’s one thing for her (his sister) to call him stupid when she’s angry with him and knows that he’s really not stupid, and it’s quite another thing for someone else to call him stupid and really mean it.
That’s pretty much the end of the bullying arc. There might’ve been more things that happened, or would’ve happened, but there’s no time for that because the Azumas are moving!
Masato’s been transferred (again) and his new office is in Kanagawa, which is fairly far away from their current home. Masato decides that, instead of buying a new house somewhere closer to his work, it would be cheaper to move back to his childhood home… with his mother.
So that’s what takes up the second half of this volume: moving the whole family to Azuma-san’s house, getting settled in, and working on finding Hikaru a new school. They all decide to move in over summer break to give the kids a chance to adjust before school starts, and they’ll need that time to adjust because I’m sure living with Azuma-san will not be easy. In fact, Sachiko thinks of it as living with Gunji-sensei (although, personally I prefer Gunji-sensei).
It really sucks that Hikaru and Kanon have to move away from the only home they’ve ever known. As they’re leaving, Sachiko thinks about all that they’re leaving behind. Places like the clinic where Hikaru was first diagnosed, the streets they all walked down together and where tantrums sometimes took place, Shichigatsu Cho Elementary, the water wheel at the park, and Sunshine House. Sachiko thanks the town and they all head off on their latest adventure.
Hikaru and Kanon adjust to life in Azuma-san’s house fairly quickly. Hikaru’s sleeping schedule is greatly disrupted, but other than that there really aren’t any major problems for him. In fact, the ones that seem to have the most trouble adjusting to this new arrangement are Sachiko and Azuma-san. Azuma-san has to get used to having her house full of people again, including living with someone who has a disability, which is a completely new experience for her. Sachiko’s problems mostly stem from having to deal with Azuma-san’s attitude about Hikaru. Azuma-san does not make things easy for Sachiko. She is constantly looking down on her, or complaining about something. She’s basically being the stereotypical mean mother-in-law here.
There’s only really one major setback that happens in this volume. Sachiko has to leave the kids in the care of Azuma-san for about an hour or so while she runs some errands. It’s a stormy day complete with thunder, lightning, and flickering lights. Stressful things keep happening for Hikaru and he is completely on edge when Azuma-san grabs his arm from behind. Up comes the other arm and it catches Azuma-san right in the face. Luckily, Kanon is there to help calm Hikaru down, but it still really spooked Azuma-san.
That event is, I think, the main factor that makes Azuma-san really want to take a small vacation. She packs her bags and heads off to somewhere a good distance away with her old ballroom dancing partner, Okumura-san. They are both staying with Okumura-san’s friend Professor Ryoumou. Ryoumou-san is quite odd: he wears sunglasses indoors, very blunt, scatterbrained, and accident prone, but he’s also very smart. Azuma-san doesn’t really know what to think of him, and then she doesn’t know what to think about anything when Okumura-san tells her that Ryoumou is autistic.
That’s what all went on with the Azuma family. There was a continuation on Eri’s storyline from last volume. Eri, who is the same age as Hikaru (14), is now dating 20-year-old Shouhei (unfortunately, I’ve seen worse in other manga so I’m just gonna let this one go), whom she met near the end of Volume 6. In this volume, Eri is going through a pregnancy scare. Luckily, she runs into Tsuchiya-sensei, the nurse from her elementary school. Tsuchiya-sensei is actually no longer employed as a nurse and is now married to Gori-sensei and pregnant with him. Tsuchiya-sensei becomes a source of support for Eri in this volume, and it is implied that she will continue to be in future. It’s a good thing too because Eri definitely needs some sort of competent role model in her life, since her parents aren’t exactly doing a very good job.
So that’s Volume 7. For the few months when I thought it was the last volume I didn’t think it ended the series in a good enough place, although I still loved this volume. Thankfully, there is one more volume that will hopefully provide a hopeful conclusion to Hikaru’s story.
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